Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerA bald eagle sits on an exposed stump in a reservoir at the Franklin Parker Preserve in the Pinelands.

Howard Boyd doesn’t hear well these days, but that doesn’t stop the naturalist from asking questions.

He wants to know exactly how many acres are in the newest tract of the sacred Pine Barrens land. He wants to know how the old cranberry bogs are being returned to their natural state. After collecting information and cataloging species in the Pine Barrens for half a century, he wants to know more.

Boyd was standing on an elevated platform with Louis Cantafio of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, overlooking the bogs and a reservoir at the new 9,700 acre Franklin Parker Preserve, the former DeMarco cranberry farm. He was getting a tour and a key to the gates of the preserve, so he could come and go as he pleased.

"If it weren’t for Howard, there would be no Pine Barrens," said Cantafio, a Ph.D. conservationist. This may be true. If the body of ecological science Boyd and people like him discovered was never publicized, the Pine Barrens might well have been sprawled upon and the federal Pinelands National Reserve wouldn’t exist.

"There is a uniqueness to this place. The acidity of the soil, and lack of nutrients in the sand, force vegetation that you don’t see in other places," Boyd said. And that attracts weird bugs, all of which Boyd has cataloged.

As Cantafio answered his questions, they watched a bald eagle perched on a distant stump, its regal white hood almost luminescent against a backdrop of gray water and green scrub pines. Another eagle flapped by, not 20 feet over the water. This one all brown.

"That’s an immature one," Boyd said. "It takes about five years before they go white."

Howard Boyd turns 96 this week, He doesn’t get into the woods much these days, not that he’s incapable. He still drives the flat Pine Barrens roads like he did at 60, doing 60.

Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerHoward Boyd talks with Louis Cantafio of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation at the Franklin Parker Preserve in the Pinelands.

"I better watch my speed," he said, riding through the village of Tabernacle on Route 532 in Burlington County, where he lives.

He still knows exactly which sandy dirt road leads where, slowing down his old forest green Honda enough to lessen the bounce of ruts and point out some not-so-obvious plant species. And he still dresses the part: layered plaid-on-plaid woolen shirts — the quilted one on top — work pants and heavy black shoes. The top shirt, and his green field cap, are as weathered as their owner.

"I’ve probably been on 80, 90 percent of the trails in here," he says. "Look hard enough, you always discover something. There’s always something new to see."

After decades of discovering and exploring and collecting and studying, Boyd wrote the naturalists’ bible of the Pines. "A Field Guide to the Barrens of New Jersey" (Plexus) was published 20 years ago. It is an illustrated catalog of most everything that flourishes there. There are thousands of entries, beginning with algae and fungi and liverworts, and working up the ecological food chain to fox and deer and eagles. Man’s history, and industry, from Colonial bog iron to modern cranberry production, is also documented.

His latest, "The Ecological Pine Barrens," came out in 2008 when Boyd was 93. That one was subtitled "An Ecosystem Threatened by Fragmentation." It is dry science, but necessary to keep the place 100,000 tourists will find unspoiled when they descend on Chatsworth next weekend for the annual October Pinelands cranberry fest.

"I stay away from that. Too crazy," Boyd said.

At the Buzby’s Chatsworth General Store, which is a Pine Barrens gift shop and book store, owner R. Marilyn Schmidt keeps Boyd’s books in stock for the serious ecological tourist. It is surrounded by Pine Barrens folk tales and ghost stories, and picture books and casual memoirs. But the heavy stuff, the bibles? They’re Boyd’s.

"He is a remarkable man," said Schmidt, an author herself. "No one has accumulated his knowledge."

Boyd’s wife, Doris, died last spring, after 71 years of marriage. Some things you can’t catalog, like a lifetime spent together. Other things, you have to find a home for.

"I’ve been a naturalist my whole life," said Boyd, who grew up on a farm in Billerica, Mass., and got every nature merit badge as a Boy Scout. In 1938, he got a biology degree from Boston University, with a concentration in botany; 41 years later came a master’s in entomology from the University of Delaware. He has a university-worthy library.

His rare entomology books are going to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. His personal papers will be archived in the academy’s department of entomology.

In this, his lifetime of knowledge is preserved, like the land he explored and studied, and loves.

And there will be one more piece of the Boyd legacy.

A new generation of entomologists studying Pinelands insect life have discovered a new variation of the Crane fly. It will be named after Howard Boyd.
Photo Gallery: View of the Pinelands